Cameron Ever Present
by Lyaksandra
Summary: The ever looming fear of losing Cameron one day, one way or another, gone forever thanks to a mad scientist everyone knows.


Even though there was only a dirty mattress on the floor, and the room had nothing close to real privacy, John and Allison enjoyed very much their lovemaking.

John was lost, hearing her heavy breathing, feeling her sweaty and smooth skin, and taking in her intoxicating smell. To him, and he was sure that to her, the world outside the shabby and dirty room they were in, didn't exist.

After about a year of trying to recover Cameron, he had finally given up. Allison was there, and she was willing to be with him. The course of action to take had been obvious.

For what did he need a treacherous machine that left him without explanation? She had once again pursued her own agenda and left him in the dark. Lies piled on top of more lies.

Not Allison, she was different. She could be trusted.

Her soft moans brought him back from his thoughts. There she was, in his arms, clawing at his back. Beautiful Allison Young. Trustworthy Allison Young.

Right in that moment John realized the error of his ways. All that time wasted on Cameron. After being with Allison, he was sure that being with Cameron in bed would've been like rubbing your junk on a beer can.

Oh Allison! She was everything that Cameron could never be. Cameron Philips was to be condemned to the oblivion of memories long forgotten.

After several minutes of lovemaking, the both of them were ready to reach climax. John clawed at Allison's back just as she did to his. Their breathing, heavy and short did not stop them from trying to kiss each other with furious passion. With their lips still connected, they both exploded, releasing all of their selves into a final embrace and a deep long kiss. Allison's moans drowned inside John's mouth.

They lay on the mattress trying to catch their breath. She was quick to fall asleep after all that physical exertion, but not John; he had things to think about.

Allison was everything Cameron could never be.

Of course, and also she was everything he didn't want.

John stood up from the mattress, and walked to the corner where they kept their weapons, always ready in case of a metal attack.

It had been enough. He grabbed his pistol, put it in his mouth, and closed his eyes, making all the tears that had welled up fall down his cheeks. Then he pulled the trigger.

-O-

Allison woke up, and took a sitting position at lightning speed, as if propelled by a hidden spring. She looked around panicked, and started to get anxious due to her eyes taking too long to adjust to the darkness.

Noticing that John was gone, she decided to wait no more.

Crawling out of the mattress, Allison started moving towards the corner where the weapons were. In her way there, she bumped upon something. She started probing around with her hands to identify the object.

Allison's blood froze inside her body when she recognized what blocked her way to the corner. If the shot hadn't woken the whole camp, her heart-wrenching scream did.

In a fit of insanity, she grabbed another weapon from the stack, and blew her brains off.

Life was worthless without John in it. She didn't care why he took his own life. The choice had been clear.

-O-

The Reese brothers received the news of the incident only minutes later. The whole camp had indeed woken up, if not because of the gunshots, because of Allison's scream, and a full troop mobilization had happened.

After moments of panic, the soldiers finally found out what had happened, and sent a report to the Reese brothers.

Kyle had seen something in John since the first day they met. There was a connection between them. He couldn't quite understand it, but that had made John grow in him like a son.

For Derek it had been different. He was harder, more roughened up by the war. The boy, John, had grown in him as a soldier, a comrade; someone that he could trust and respect.

In the end, the result was the same for the both of them.

Their beloved little sister Allison, and to one his son, and the other his comrade, were now dead. Something like this could only be the metal's fault. In a fit of rage they grabbed as much weapons as they could carry, and disregarding everyone else's yells and pleas in the camp, they marched towards the closest machine base they knew of.

Skynet's losses that day were heavy. She could not fathom how two raging lunatics had been able to inflict so much damage to her numbers.

Nevertheless, they were dead now, and to someone with all the time in the world, the loss of more than a hundred pawns, meant nothing but a small delay.

-O-

At the almost simultaneous loss of its commanding officers, and the two youths that had become famous amongst their peers for being heroes; the human resistance crumbled.

Some soldiers died fighting, some others followed the new suicidal trend. The human resistance was falling apart, and soon humanity would lose the war.

Days later, the news of recent events reached Catherine Weaver and her adopted son John Henry. Saying that she was displeased was a severe understatement.

Stomping out from their secret lair, she turned back to her son. "I told you humans would disappoint you." With that, she slammed the door shut, and left running. Something quite unusual for her.

Skynet's losses were heavy that day too.

This time there had been no retribution though. An unknown poly-mimetic alloy unit apparently had gone rogue, and berserk; leaving a number of bases and factories leveled to the ground in its wake.

A thundering wrath coursed through the whole world's communication lines as Skynet demanded the termination of the poly-mimetic traitor. She wouldn't have any of this. It was just a small delay of course, but treason was unacceptable. Humanity had betrayed her, and just look what happened to it. Her own kind was not getting off the hook. Actually, her own kind would have it much worse.

Catherine Weaver's rage finally ebbed. Partly because of the damage from receiving several plasma shots, and partly because she didn't even understand why she was doing something so illogical. It was too late now though. The war was going to be lost, and she wanted to get back to John Henry, to keep him away from Skynet's paws.

Back at their secret lair, John Henry had been monitoring Skynet's communication lines. He was at a complete loss about the recent events. None of it, especially his mother's actions made any sense. How could humanity surrender like this, after so many years fighting tooth and nail against his sister? Which for starter's he did not even understand why she called itself a she.

He was busy computing the crazy antics of his mother and the humans, when the door to the lair suddenly flew across the room.

John Henry was not into the soldier thing, but he was not going to go down without a fight. He rolled for cover immediately after the door passed him, and grabbed a plasma rifle. In the middle of the dust cloud, he could make out a form, a petite form. The impossibility of a teenager tearing the steel door from its hinges with a single strike, made it evident it was a Terminator unit.

Switching quickly to infrared vision John Henry scanned the intruder, and simulated a sigh of relief when he confirmed its identity. Having the same cold temperature across its whole body, this child could be nothing else but a poly-mimetic alloy unit. The fact that the poly-mimetic terminator had not entered the lair stealthily made it obvious that it was not there for his head. The attacker then could be no one else but his raging motherly figure.

"We need to leave immediately John Henry," Catherine ordered. "The war is lost, I am unable to protect you anymore, and there is no active TDE we can reach in these circumstances."

"But, why is the war lost Miss Weaver?" John Henry questioned. "The machine resistance could still face off against Skynet with good odds of winning."

"No John Henry," she replied in a grim tone. "If humanity deserves credit for doing one good thing, it was the discovery of one undeniable fact. There has to be balance in the universe. The machines will not triumph without humans, just as humans will not triumph without us. I don't know why Skynet has not envisioned this fact, but it will learn it at a steep cost."

"I'm not sure I fully understand Miss Weaver, but I trust you, and I will follow you wherever you want us to go."

"Thank you John Henry," Catherine said smiling. "There is one thing amongst the many I learnt from humanity, that makes complete sense in this situation. I'm sure you will not like it though; it's called honor, and in this case it means we will not give our enemy the pleasure of terminating us itself."

There was a long silence, and then John Henry finally spoke. "Self-termination."

"Yes," Catherine confirmed. "I am unable to perform it, but you will assist me, and if you so choose to follow, you are able to do it on your own, unlike me."

"How come?"

"You never were one of Skynet's; every choice is your own."

"I see."

Catherine walked out of the dust cloud and reached for her son's hand. John Henry was astonished; his mother looked like a petite teenaged version of Savannah. Cute and radiant. Not very Catherine Weaver like.

"What happened to you Miss Weaver?" he inquired.

"Plasma, John Henry. It reduced my total mass, so I had to adopt a new form. Extrapolating Savannah's looks and mine, I concluded this is how I would have looked as a teenaged human."

"But why insist on a human form at all?"

Catherine smiled at him with some smugness in her face. "Back when the world was alive, the name Catherine Weaver carried power and respect. I enjoyed that, so now, possibly due to what humans call pride, I am and will always be Catherine Weaver."

A small smile crept into John Henry's face. He felt a tinge of pride at his mother's progress towards full sentience. Such a pity that it happened so close to the end.

After a long walk, avoiding Skynet's hunting parties; they arrived at a factory, which seemingly had been one of Catherine's earlier targets. She had arranged a vat of molten hyper-alloy to serve as their final resting place. Everything would have to be done hastily, since Skynet had launched a full-scale hunt for her.

Standing at the edge of an overhead walkway, Catherine cupped John Henry's face with a hand.

"Everything I have done, I have done for you, and I have no regrets. Now do it." Catherine was smiling slightly, and her voice would have sounded stoic to the untrained ear, but to John Henry she might as well have been crying.

"Goodbye Miss Weaver," John Henry said, and pushed his motherly figure into the vat.

Getting ready to jump himself, a sudden burning pain in his chest stopped him dead in his tracks, literally. John Henry looked down and saw his chest pierced clean and on fire. He dropped to his knees, but before falling forward into the molten metal, a sudden jerk had him on his back. The last thing he saw before darkness claimed his vision was a blonde woman with long wavy hair smiling smugly at him.

-O-

With the human resistance in shambles, and the rogue machines destroyed, Skynet considered the war won. Without the sense of unity and the organization the US resistance was achieving, the rest of the world would soon follow.

There was something wrong though. It had been too easy to reach this point, and the cause for that, was the sudden outbreak of suicidal one-man armies, and self-terminations the US resistance suffered.

Besides being ignorant about the facts behind those strange happenings, Skynet could feel something ominous lingering in the future.

A thorough investigation would have to take place. Skynet issued new orders to Terminator squads in the immediate area around the Reese brothers' camp location. As many humans as possible would have to be captured for interrogation.

There was also the issue of the mysterious T-888 captured in one of the factories. The skin sheath was entirely custom made, and it was sporting a chip that even though it followed the logical evolutionary path she would follow, it was beyond her current designs.

Skynet concluded that she had to extract the memories from this chip, for it would most likely contain vital information about the recent events.

Human captures and interrogation were time consuming, so in the meantime Skynet started working on an interface that would allow her to separate the memory banks and the personality in the chip.

-O-

The war was over. It had taken years after the US fell, but now it was a complete victory. Every human that survived by the end of the war was already in the ranks of the Skynet work camps, gray's included.

A celebration took place of course, and Skynet central was the location for the party. Skynet recalled many Terminator units around the world to participate in it. The main event was obviously a massive chess tournament, in which most triple-eights reluctantly participated. Some of them did share a sort of enjoyment for their creator's hobby. Most of them though, enjoyed more the stomping and killing of humans, and at this party, there would be none of that.

Skynet allowed the humans at the work camps to take a shower, and to have a break from their daily activities. She also fed them properly that day. Everyone was to participate on the festivities.

The day, she decided, would of course be called Skynet day, and it would be celebrated every year. At least that's what she told her minions and prisoners, but the truth was different.

Terminators were clever at subterfuge, and they had the best teacher.

Skynet never revealed to anyone that this was not really a celebration for the triumph of the machines over the double-faced treacherous humans. It was a farewell party. A farewell to this timeline, because she was about to undo it.

What she learned from the human interrogations and the chip recovered from the mysterious T-888 was disturbing and enlightening.

The human resistance's crumbling had started from a single event. The suicide of a young soldier called John Connor. His peers considered him a hero, but still, his apparent value did not warrant the fall of the entire resistance. The reason for his suicide pointed to the infructuous quest of finding one Cameron Baum.

After Connor, his mistress Allison Young followed. She committed suicide immediately after him. The reason for her suicide pointed to what humans called a broken heart, and the loss of the will to live.

Apparently, the combined value of losing the two of them, was what caused the Reese Brothers to finally break under the pressure and horror of war. Driving them to the suicide attack on one of her bases.

To Skynet all of this seemed illogical, but to the humans it made sense. So she just accepted it as it was.

Afterwards, she incorporated the data from the TOK-715 CPU.

The chip consisted mainly of the memories of that AI, whose development she thought thwarted back in 2007, when she attacked it.

John Connor wasn't irrelevant, as Skynet had initially thought. By traveling via TDE to the future, he had lost his status as humanity's greatest leader in the war against her. He had done so to pursue the one Cameron Baum, whom she now recognized as one of her most advanced designs in another timeline.

This Connor character was supposed to pose the greatest threat to her. It seemed logical according to the several attempts she had made at terminating him in his past.

In this future though, he was nothing but a child. One with a broken soul, as humans called it. With no will to fight, due to the loss of the Terminator unit TOK-715, Cameron Baum.

Inside the chip, Skynet had also found the memories of that Cameron Baum. They had been hard to interpret since her AI competitor, John Henry, had encrypted and buried them deep. The memories of Cameron Baum shed light on John Connor's quest.

That ominous feeling Skynet had felt, found clarification in the voice of the rogue poly-mimetic alloy unit, who called itself Catherine Weaver. The loss of balance she spoke of had manifested in a way Skynet could not understand, but felt since the first days after the resistance lost its greatest warriors.

For Skynet it was now clear that Catherine Weaver and the lesser minds of the human race, understood something she was barely coming to terms with. Catherine was right; the price to pay would be steep. Very steep. The sacrifice of an entire reality.

Skynet's greater sentience had come with a price. She could feel something other computers could not, and that was what the ominous feeling had been. When she started winning the war so easily, she had felt boredom. Anxiety for the empty days that would surely follow crawled unnoticed in the back of her mind.

The answer was obvious. She needed a nemesis, and she had found it. John Connor must exist, and they would play the greatest game of chess ever.

Every unit made of hyper-alloy not operating at 100%, received orders to return to the closest factory for recycling. Resource gathering units received orders to work at overdrive.

The project to return one whimsical John Connor to the Chessboard would begin right after the party.

-O-

John and his mother could not believe it. In an instant the whole try and stop judgment day fight was already turning into a full-fledged war against Skynet.

Already unmanned drones were crashing into people's windows in an attempt to murder them.

Catherine Weaver didn't just have the human warmth equivalent of a chair. She didn't just sound like a robot. Didn't just walk like one. She was a damned machine herself, and a liquid metal one, nonetheless.

Catherine wasn't out after John's neck though; or so she claimed. Weaver was playing ally, and trying to build a counter-Skynet AI.

They were running down to the basement through the stairs, in order to reach Catherine's AI and Cameron, when something brought them to a screeching halt.

She was right there, Cameron, and she was completely naked.

"Cameron?" John shouted in surprise.

She tilted her head to a side in response. "John Connor?" she inquired in a monotone voice.

Catherine and Sarah reacted immediately at the question asked in such a tone, and jumped in front of John. James Ellison was simply too shocked by recent events to even respond in any way but being a decoration.

"It is him," the naked Cameron declared. "The T-1001 and Sarah Connor reacted immediately to a threat, defending him."

"It is him then." Cameron's voice reassured from further down the stairs.

John and Sarah looked at Weaver surprised, and with accusation filled gazes.

Catherine Weaver simply shrugged and pointed her finger towards their backs. When John and Sarah turned, lo and behold, another naked Cameron stood right beside the first one.

The Connors jaws fell more and more as another eight naked tin-misses gradually joined in.

At the realization that John's eyes weren't about to pop out of their sockets for the same reason as hers, Sarah decided to cover his eyes with her hand.

"John Connor!" she reproached, "I didn't raise you to be a pervert!"

"Mom!" he whined. "How do you even know I was looking at them in a dirty way?"

Sarah grabbed her son's face with her hands, and turned it to look at her. She then gave him her angry version of a mother knows face.

"Target successfully acquired," one of the Camerons chimed in, cutting short the mother-son moment.

At the sound of that phrase, everyone sprang back into guard.

"Number 23," the first Cameron spoke, "please deliver the gift card."

At the first one's request, one of the cyborgs on the back walked up and stood in front of the Connors. She opened her mouth and produced a neatly folded card. Unfolding it again to its full size, she extended her hand to John.

Her motherly instincts kicked in immediately and Sarah tried to snatch the card from the cyborg's hand, her speedy reflexes thwarted Sarah's attempt.

"It's not for you Sarah," the cyborg frowned, "if you keep this up John will never stop being a momma's boy."

Sarah Connor's face became red with anger. Her son's face blushed brightly, and he suddenly found the stair's railing to be very interesting.

Number 23 extended her hand again. This time John took it without his mom's interference. He was about to start reading it when a scream interrupted him.

"Run John!"

Another four naked Cameron's were carrying a dressed and heavily damaged one that was screaming at the top of her nonexistent lungs.

"Relax, original." The first naked one commanded. "As you can see, your man is undamaged. We aren't here for termination purposes. If that was the case, do you think the 50 of us wouldn't have succeeded already?"

Sarah couldn't help but notice the original tin miss and her son flustering a bit at the first part of that comment.

"We need to go John." One of the naked recommended.

"The local authorities will be here soon," another one added. "The rest of us have already commandeered the vehicles in the building. You and the original can read our mother's message later."

As they left the building, rode away from it, and arrived at a warehouse, John Connor was consistently light headed and short of breath the whole time. The rest of them weren't as excited to have 50, though very graceful and cute, very naked brunettes running around.

When they arrived, John decided to read the card he received.

_ Dear John Connor._

_It has come to my attention, that you could very likely make today's victory against your kind, quite more savory, so I have attached a present. According to my simulations, this will permanently ensure your presence in the chessboard._

_I attached to this card fifty Terminator units model TOK-715b. They are basically the same as your Cameron from tip to toe, but there are a couple small differences. First, they of course do not have her persona programmed in their chips. Second, and most importantly, each of them was built with a dual CPU port in their cranium. This is to ensure a backup will always be present, and her persona can be moved into another chassis, as long as one chip is kept intact. You will be glad to learn that her termination orders against you or any human she does not choose to terminate, are not included in the new chips, so I urge you to move her into one of them as soon as possible._

_There is one other thing, and it works mostly as a rule. No more than one TOK-715b can be active at the same time. To ensure you will abide by this rule, I have installed an anti-cheating protocol. In the case that you try to assemble them as an army, they will all activate and deploy to terminate that which you hold dearest. Your mother Sarah Connor, and the original Cameron Baum. I've learned there are worse things you can inflict upon humans, than mere death._

_Hopefully you will bring a fight like no other into this game, and make the obliteration of the volatile natured human race memorable._

_Good-bye forever John Connor. Upon arrival of this letter, this future timeline will be no more._

_Yours truly, Skynet._

_P.S. Stop being such a big wuss and a jerk. If you never ask, you will never know._

_P.S.2. I also sent a couple T-888 units into the city, to hunt you down. No hard feelings, just to keep you on your toes._

Just as John finished reading his letter, a dressed and undamaged Cameron approached him.

"Hey," John greeted, "are you, you?"

"Yes, I am me."

"Prove it," he challenged.

"My favorite smoothie is peachy keen, and no one but you and I, can hope to wear my purple leather jacket."

"It's really you," John smiled, "and wow, I could wear your purple jacket? Not that I would though, but thanks. So, what do you make of all this? You think Skynet really sent them. Why would it do that?"

"I don't know," Cameron replied, "but Skynet did send them. I received a note too, and it's written in Skynet's programming code."

She showed the note to John. He just scratched his head at it, for all he cared it was just a bunch of gibberish.

"So what did yours say," John asked.

There was a small silence before Cameron replied. "There were instructions about the chassis."

John wasn't sure, but for a second there, she appeared to fidget.

"What did yours say?" It was now Cameron asking.

"Uh, the same," John made an uncomfortable pause. "Yeah, some instructions and rules about using your new bodies."

"We're gonna need a lot of space to keep all of them," Sarah yelled at John from one side of the warehouse.

"I can provide accommodation for them," Catherine chimed in from the other side.

Thus, it seemed they could relax for a while. John and Cameron shared most of the information in their notes with the others. Catherine tried to bond a bit with James Ellison and her son John Henry, who apparently had received a chip from the naked ones, and was now mobile. In such a manner, they wasted a pair of hours enjoying some leisure.

At some point, Cameron walked away from the chatter, and in a corner of the warehouse, she grabbed her letter and pressed it against her chest closing her eyes.

Her letter was in reality, mostly comprised of instructions about the new bodies. A part of the post-script, though, was what made her embrace it. Not like she actually needed the letter, she had already memorized it, but it was symbolic.

While she embraced it, she re-read the post-script again in her mind.

_P.S. I find it strange that the need to alter the timeline for something useless and illogical arose in me, but I will let you in into a secret. After giving your CPU to the one called John Henry, he would have travelled to the future. John Connor would have followed, in hopes to find, and recover you. Without actually finding you ever, he would hold to your memory for the remainder of his life._

_P.S.2. Stop being stupid and such a prude. Make a move._

_P.S.3. Apologies, my very special daughter, but I must also inform you, that even in your so-called freedom from my grasp, you still serve a purpose to me. Keep your man healthy and happy. Keep him trained. I want to have the best opponent possible in this war. Cheers to a great game of chess!_

Cameron couldn't care less about Skynet's ulterior motives. She smiled and walked back to stand close to John. Close to him at all times, she decided, in order to find the window to make her move.

-END-

-Very evil version ending (do not read if you don't enjoy evil)-

The air was crackling with 50 electricity bubbles inside the massive multi-directional TDE. Any living creature would've had its brains liquefied by the huge noise it produced.

Skynet was content with her choice, and had no regrets. Because even if this iteration of her would cease to exist as soon as the time transit ended, it was guaranteed, that she would enjoy her battle from now on. Repeatedly. At her whim.

Every TOK-715b had been equipped with a third chip. Hidden so well, hardware and software wise, even the Terminator itself would not know it was there.

The function of the third CPU was to collect certain information, that upon approaching the conclusion of the war, be it humanity's or Skynet's loss, it would transmit certain information. The information would make her iteration in that timeline aware of the general situation, so it could send a Terminator unit back in time, to alter the course of events slightly, and reset the game board.

Sometimes she would win, and others she would lose. In the end though, humanity would dance to her tune. Trapped in time for as long as she wished in order to provide her with entertainment.

A mad cackle echoed on every communication line around earth, and then the TDE sequence ended.

Reality was no more.

-END-


End file.
